A Dual-LSTM Collaborative Network for Maneuvering UAV Tracking with Incomplete Measurements in Maritime Environments

Tracking highly maneuverable UAVs in complex maritime environments faces multiple challenges: dynamic sea surface interference and low-altitude occlusion make UAV motion trajectories difficult to predict; the strong maneuvering behavior of UAVs imposes high demands on tracking real-time performance and accuracy; and marine environmental noise and unstable shipborne sensor data lead to measurement incompleteness. These factors collectively limit the adaptability and robustness of existing maneuvering UAV tracking methods in complex maritime scenarios. In this context, accurate model recognition for UAVs becomes a key factor in improving tracking performance. Traditional interactive multiple model (IMM) methods rely on probabilistic weighting for model selection, suffering from response delays during UAV maneuvers, and fixed model sets cannot adapt to diverse maneuvering scenarios, resulting in degraded UAV velocity estimation accuracy. To address the above issues, this study proposes a dual long short-term memory (LSTM) cooperative network architecture, targeting the two key problems of incomplete measurements in shipborne radar measurements and inaccurate model probability estimation, and presents corresponding solutions. First, an online-trained LSTM-based incomplete-measurement compensation method is proposed, which achieves real-time fitting and restoration of historical measurement data, providing continuous and stable measurement inputs for shipborne platform UAV tracking in maritime environments. Second, building on this, an LSTM-based UAV model recognition method is developed to directly identify the UAV’s current motion model from multi-frame historical measurement information, effectively reducing maneuvering delays. Furthermore, GPS data is used to generate optimal model probabilities as training labels, thereby improving model reliability. Simulation results show that, under incomplete-measurement conditions, the proposed method can effectively reconstruct missing measurements and ensure measurement continuity. Under complete-measurement conditions, the proposed LSTM-based model recognition method significantly improves UAV model recognition accuracy and three-dimensional velocity estimation performance, demonstrating the effectiveness of deep learning for maneuvering UAV tracking from shipborne platforms in maritime environments.